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Why Do So Many Leaders Suck? | David Dye’s Engage! | November 2016

Imagine that you’ve just completed your team meeting to wrap up the first quarter of 2017. You did it. You hit your goals. The team is energized. You look at your team and you see smiles, pride, even laughter. Then, as you’re packing up, the most skeptical team member, the one who started the year with their arms crossed, walks up to you, shakes your hand, smiles, and says, “Wow, I didn’t think we could do it. But we did—and we even had fun along the way. I get it now. Thank you.”

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Why Do So Many Leaders Suck?

why-do-so-many-leaders-suck

It happens every time.

I’d just wrapped up a keynote speech with nearly a thousand frontline leaders, middle level managers, and executives. Their energy to practice Winning Well leadership with their teams was palpable. The line to talk formed quickly and the most frequent question was one I’ve heard nearly every time I speak:

“David, everything your saying makes sense and I want to do it with my team. But if it works, why are there so many lousy leaders out there?”

It’s an important question to answer. Karin and I believe in Winning Well. We have lived it. I have transformed multiple organizations through the principles and practices we share. So has Karin. We know it works.

And yet…

Scott Adams continues to be able to write Dilbert – a comic strip founded on the shared misery of poor business leadership.
The ranks of executives are filled with narcissists
Employee engagement continues to hover barely over 30%

Bad leadership is a fact – but if there’s a better way, why don’t we see more of it?

Why Leaders Suck (and What to Do About It)

I’ve personally trained, mentored, and coached thousands of business managers. In my experience, these are the most common reasons leaders struggle:

1) Lack of confidence

When leaders take our Winning Well assessment, the most common outcome we see are leaders who want to get along and be liked. When you try to lead from a desire to be liked, you’ll end up compromising your values, aren’t sure how to speak the truth effectively, and don’t set an audacious, energizing vision for fear of being laughed at, ignored, or overwhelming your people.

In contrast, when you have the confidence to lead, you create clarity and security for your people, you energize them with a future that’s exciting and makes them better because it’s bigger than they are. That’s attractive and something people want (and need).

2) Lack of humility

One of my early leadership mentors was fond of saying, “Never believe your own press release.” I love this maxim – the most effective leaders connect with people authentically because they are connected to themselves.

Humility doesn’t mean you’re a door mat. Quite the opposite: humility requires the courage to invite challenges to your thinking, to admit when you’re wrong, and to recognize the dignity, strength, and worth of every person.

3) Inattention to results

Your team exists to achieve results. Otherwise, what’s the point? Those results might be design and build a product or to deliver a service. You might be a private boutique business, a small nonprofit, or a large government department. Regardless, there are results you need to achieve.

However, it’s very common for managers and leaders to lose sight of the real reason their team exists. They get caught up in the day-to-day business that plagues us and soon lose sight of what matters most. In my work, I’ve found that you cannot repeat your purpose often enough. Every day, twice a day if needed. Both for you and for your team. Keep results front and center.

4) Inattention to relationships

Leaders make two common mistakes with regard to relationships: either they fail to connect with their people as human beings (treating them like machines rather than people) or they spend time trying to make people happy and be liked, rather than respected.

Effective leaders treat people with dignity, they connect to individuals as human beings, they collaborate, and invest in their most important asset, helping team members to grow and thrive.

5) Lack of accountability

Early in my career, one of my frontline colleagues had a saying, “Everyone’s accountable to someone.” I’ve amended his mantra to be: “Everyone’s accountable to someone – or should be.”

Leaders who don’t have to make account of their resources, their behavior, and their decisions are prone to the corruptions that often come with power. In contrast, when you create transparent accountability where your team can hold you accountable, your supervisor or Board knows what you’re up to and why, you keep yourself safe from many of this pitfalls.

6) Lack of courage

Many leaders live in fear – fear of failure, fear of disappointing their team, or fear of their own boss or board. You just can’t lead that way. Fear paralyzes and prevents you from making good decisions and giving your people the confidence they need to rally and focus.

If this describes you, try asking yourself, “What would a person with courage do in this situation?” Then try doing that. Find your courage by adopting it.

7) Lack of skill

I hope you would never put a front-line employee to work with no training and expect them to succeed.

And yet, this happens with managers all the time. I’ve seen studies suggesting that just over half of managers are put in their jobs without any specific management or leadership training.

That is unforgivable. We would never entrust a cash register or heavy equipment to an untrained employee and yet it happens all the time with your most important asset – your people.

If you feel inadequately trained to lead and manage your team, you’re not alone. A recent Forbes article suggests that 98% of managers believe managers in their company need more training in order to be effective.

The takeaway – if you’re a leader, make sure you master the skills to lead and manage effectively. (Wondering where to start? Can I humbly suggest Winning Well?)

And if you’re promoting people into positions of leadership and management, for goodness sake: Train Them! Get them the skills they need to succeed. Don’t have a budget? You can afford a book – study one chapter at a time. No excuses – take responsibly and make sure your people are capable and competent to work with your most valuable resource.

8) Lack of awareness

These are leaders who don’t know what’s really happening – in the organization, in themselves, or on their team. This lack of awareness is crippling. I’ve watched leaders buckle under the weight of the truth about themselves and their own effectiveness when confronted with a strong 360 degree evaluation.

In contrast, the strongest leaders have their finger on the pulse of the organization, their team, and their own effectiveness. They don’t shy away from the truth. They have the courage to confront the truth as it is, not as they wish it would be.

9) Lack of Focus

In our always-on, hyper connected world it is easy to get overwhelmed and paralyzed, feeling as though everything is a priority. Leaders who live here are reactive, running from crisis to crisis, unable to make meaningful forward progress toward what matters most.

Effective leaders know there will never be enough time to do everything they could (or even want to) do. Every day they identify their MIT (Most Important Thing) and ensure they do what matters most before allowing the distractions of the day to derail them.

10) Self-Centered

Leaders who take the job primarily for pride, power, or purse always struggle. Those reasons are about you. They have nothing to do with your team or your team’s purpose.

Effective leaders prioritize their people and their purpose in all their decisions. There’s nothing wrong with feelings of pride or a bigger paycheck, but if you want to inspire and energize your people, those can’t be the main reasons you lead.

Your Turn

Imagine a time when your children or your grand children can read a Dilbert cartoon and not understand why it’s funny. When they read it and are confused: “That’s weird. Why would anyone act like that?” When healthy leadership that comes from confidence and humility is the norm. Where results and relationships hold equal weight in every discussion and decision.

There’s only one way we get there…

You.

Yes you – when you commit to Winning Well yourself. When you hold yourself accountable, get the feedback you need, and when you pay attention to (and reward) both the results your people get and how they get them.

When you commit to that journey and then bring other leaders with you – that’s how we create the future we want.

Thousands of leaders have committed to Winning Well already, will you?

Be the leader you want your boss to be,

David Dye